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Quercus announces raft of changes non-fiction, crime and thriller and literary publishing
Quercus, a division of Hachette UK, has announced a raft of staffing changes across non-fiction, crime and thriller and literary publishing.
In non-fiction, Kate Hewson has joined Quercus as its new trade non-fiction publisher, with Kerry Enzor continuing as publisher of the illustrated and IP-focused sister imprint Greenfinch. Hewson was formerly publishing director at John Murray and Two Roads, where she published Akala’s debut Natives, the Philomena Cunk series and David Attenborough’s bestselling lost Zoo Quest series. In 2025, John Murray Press publishes Hewson’s final acquisition for that list, Attenborough’s landmark book about our last great, critical wilderness, Ocean, to be published on his 99th birthday.
At MacLehose Press and Riverrun, Jon Riley becomes editor-in-chief, leading Quercus’ literary publishing and "building on the long Quercus tradition of being one of the world’s leading publishers in translation".
Alongside commissioning editors Jasmine Palmer and Paul Engles on the riverrun and MacLehose lists respectively, Riley will also work more closely with Stefanie Bierwerth, who becomes head of crime and thriller across all of the Quercus imprints. Bierwerth will continue to lead the genre on the main Quercus imprint but will also take a strategic lead with Jon Riley on the crime publishing spread across riverrun and the MacLehose Press.
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Andrew Smith joins Quercus as its new head of design. Formerly deputy design director at Penguin under the late John Hamilton, Smith designed covers for authors including Noam Chomsky and John le Carré before going freelance for the past decade. More recently, Smith has acted as a creative consultant for Quercus, overseeing its new logo and rebrand and designing many covers.
Jon Butler, managing director, Quercus said: "These exciting new hires and strategic changes reflect Quercus doubling down on its key strengths: a traditionally strong over-index in market share in Crime and Thriller; a real commitment to the cultural project of finding voices from around the world, and bringing them to an English-language readership; and pure creativity.
"Across our commissioning, design and in our campaigns work, we remain a publisher committed to surprising and delighting readers, and publishing with flair, wit and invention."
